WILL mounted ebonite disk
On smooth unyielding bearing,
When turned about with motion brisk
(Nor excitation sparing),
Affect the primitive repose,
Of + and — in a wire,
So that while either downward flows,
The other upwards shall aspire?
Describe the form and size of coil,
And other things that we may need,
Think not about increase of toil
Involved in work at double speed.
I can no more, my pen is bad,
It catches in the roughened page—
But answer us and make us glad,
Thou Anti-distance-action Sage!
Yet have I still a thousand things to say,
But work of other kinds is pressing—
So your petitioner will ever pray
That your defence he triple messing.[311]

Answer to Tait.

THE mounted disk of ebonite
Has whirled before, nor whirled in vain;
Rowland of Troy, that doughty knight,
Convection currents did obtain[312]
In such a disk, of power to wheedle,
From its loved North the subtle[313] needle.
’Twas when Sir Rowland, as a stage
From Troy to Baltimore, took rest
In Berlin, there old Archimage,[314]
Armed him to follow up this quest;
Right glad to find himself possessor
Of the irrepressible Professor.[315]
But wouldst thou twirl[316] that disk once more,
Then follow in Childe Rowland’s train,
To where in busy Baltimore
He brews[317] the bantlings of his brain;
As he may do who still prefers
One Rowland to two Olivers.[318]
But Rowland,—no, nor Oliver,—
Could get electromotive force,
Which fact and reason both aver,
Has change of some kind as its source,
Out of a disk in swift rotation
Without the least acceleration.
But with your splendid roundabout
Of mighty power, new-hung and greasy,
With galvanometer so stout,
A new research would be as easy;
A test which might perchance disclose.
Which way the electric current flows.
Take then a coil of copper pure,
And fix it on your whirling table;
Place the electrodes firm and sure
As near the axis as you’re able,
And soon you’ll learn the way to work it.
With galvanometer in circuit.
Not while the coil in spinning sleeps,
On her smooth axle swift and steady;
But when against the stops she sweeps,
To watch the light-spot then be ready.
That you may learn from its deflexion
The electric current’s true direction.
It may be that it does not move,
Or moves but for some other reason;
Then let it be your boast to prove
(Though some may think it out of season,
And worthy of a fossil Druid),
That there is no Electric Fluid.

Report on Tait’s Lecture on Force:—B.A., 1876.

YE British Asses, who expect to hear
Ever some new thing,
I’ve nothing new to tell, but what, I fear,
May be a true thing.
For Tait comes with his plummet and his line,
Quick to detect your
Old bosh new dressed in what you call a fine
Popular lecture.
Whence comes that most peculiar smattering.
Heard in our section?
Pure nonsense, to a scientific swing
Drilled to perfection?
That small word “Force,” they make[319] a barber’s block,
Ready to put on
Meanings most strange and various, fit to shock
Pupils of Newton.
Ancient and foreign ignorance they throw
Into the bargain;
The shade of Leibniz[320] mutters from below
Horrible jargon.
The phrases of last century in this
Linger to play tricks—
Vis Viva and Vis Mortua and Vis
Acceleratrix:—
Those long-nebbed words that to our text books still
Cling by their titles,
And from them creep, as entozoa will,
Into our vitals.
But see! Tait writes in lucid symbols clear
One small equation;
And Force becomes of Energy a mere
Space-variation.
Force, then, is Force, but mark you! not a thing,
Only a Vector;
Thy barbed arrows now have lost their sting,
Impotent spectre!
Thy reign, O Force! is over. Now no more
Heed we thine action;
Repulsion leaves us where we were before,
So does attraction.
Both Action and Reaction now are gone.
Just ere they vanished,
Stress joined their hands in peace, and made them one;
Then they were banished.
The Universe is free from pole to pole,
Free from all forces.
Rejoice! ye stars—like blessed gods ye roll
On in your courses.
No more the arrows of the Wrangler race,
Piercing shall wound you.
Forces no more, those symbols of disgrace,
Dare to surround you:
But those whose statements baffle all attacks,
Safe by evasion,—
Whose definitions, like a nose of wax,
Suit each occasion,—
Whose unreflected rainbow far surpassed
All our inventions,
Whose very energy appears at last
Scant of dimensions:—
Are these the gods in whom ye put your trust,
Lordlings and ladies?
The hidden[321] potency of cosmic dust
Drives them to Hades.
While you, brave Tait! who know so well the way
Forces to scatter,
Calmly await the slow but sure decay,
Even of Matter.

(Cats) Cradle Song,

By a Babe in Knots.

PETER the Repeater,
Platted round a platter
Slips of slivered paper,
Basting them with batter.
Hype ’em, slit ’em, twist ’em,
Lop-looped laps of paper;
Setting out the system
By the bones of Neper.
Clear your coil of kinkings
Into perfect plaiting,
Locking loops and linkings
Interpenetrating.
Why should a man benighted,
Beduped, befooled, besotted,
Call knotful knittings plighted,
Not knotty but beknotte?
It’s monstrous, horrid, shocking,
Beyond the power of thinking,
Not to know, interlocking
Is no mere form of linking.
But little Jacky Horner
Will teach you what is proper,
So pitch him, in his corner,
Your silver and your copper.

To Hermann Stoffkraft, Ph.D., the Hero of a recent work called “Paradoxical Philosophy.”

A Paradoxical Ode.

[After Shelley.]

I.

1878.

MY soul is an entangled[322] knot,
Upon a liquid vortex wrought
By Intellect, in the Unseen residing.
And thine doth like a convict sit,
With marlinspike untwisting it,
Only to find its knottiness abiding;
Since all the tools for its untying
In four-dimensioned space are lying,
Wherein thy fancy intersperses
Long[323] avenues of universes,
While Klein and Clifford fill the void
With one finite, unbounded homaloid,
And think the Infinite is now at last destroyed.
II.
But when thy Science lifts her pinions
In Speculation’s wild dominions,
We treasure every dictum thou emittest,
While down the stream of Evolution
We drift, expecting no solution
But that of the survival of the fittest.
Till, in the twilight of the gods,
When earth and sun are frozen clods,
When, all its energy degraded,
Matter to æther shall have faded;
We, that is, all the work we’ve done,
As waves in æther, shall for ever run
In ever-widening[324] spheres through heavens beyond the sun.
III.
Great Principle of all we see,
Unending Continuity!
By thee are all our angles sweetly rounded,
By thee are our misfits adjusted,
And as I still in thee have trusted,
So trusting, let me never be confounded!
Oh never may direct Creation
Break in upon my contemplation;
Still may thy causal chain, ascending,
Appear unbroken and unending,
While Residents in the Unseen—
Ions and Emanations—intervene,
And from my shrinking soul the Unconditioned screen.[325]

FOOTNOTES:

[275] The occasion of this and of the following poem is fully explained in a note from the Rev. Canon Farrar, which is here subjoined:—

To Prof. Campbell.

30th March 1882.

My dear Sir—I am sorry that the playful nonsense of my undergraduate days should be printed, but if the lines will in the slightest degree help to illustrate the extreme goodness and kind-heartedness of Maxwell, I am content.

The circumstances were these. I went up to Cambridge very ill prepared in mathematics, and my classical work was much hindered by the considerable amount of mathematics required for a “Senior Optime,” at which I aimed. In despair I used to say to Maxwell sometimes that I should be “plucked” in mathematics, which in those days would have prevented my taking classical honours. He, in his ready sympathy, and the kind interest which he showed towards me, took my words d’un trop grand sérieux, and wrote me the poetic apologue, in which he advised me to aim at poetry like a lark, while I left mathematicians to the distinction of being what Carlyle calls the “quickest and completest of vegetables.” The point of his advice was that I should give up the effort to win honour in the Mathematical Tripos, and should be content with the Poll, or ordinary mathematical degree, reserving my strength for the Classical Tripos. I sent him my reply the same day, and I remember he pressed me to let him read it at one of our social meetings—which I absolutely refused to allow him to do. Without this word of explanation the verses would seem too nonsensical.—Yours very truly,

F. W. Farrar.

[276] Mr. Frere had accepted the living of Schillington, but retained his fellowship for the customary “year of grace.”

[277] The genuine esteem expressed in the concluding words, which alone in this youthful pasquinade are to be taken seriously, must be the apology for inserting what Maxwell himself would not have printed.

[278] v.r. Stout.

[279] C. G. S. system—the system of units founded on the centimetre, gramme, and second. See report of Committee on units. Brit. Ass. Report for 1873, p. 222.

[280] Erg—the energy communicated by a dyne, acting through a centimetre. See p. 60, note 2.

[281] Tenth-metre = 1 metre times 10 Superscript negative 10.

[282] Megadyne = 1 dyne times 10 Superscript 6. It is somewhat more than the weight of a kilogramme.

[283] Dyne—the force which, acting on a gramme for a second, would give a velocity of a centimetre per second. The weight of a gramme is about 980 dynes.

[284] See Sound and Music, by Sedley Taylor, p. 89.

[285] See Poinsot, Théorie nouvelle de la rotation des corps.

[286] See Prof. Ball on the Theory of Screws, Phil. Trans., 1873.

[287] Nabla was the name of an Assyrian harp of the shape nabla. nabla is a quaternion operator left parenthesis i StartFraction d Over d x EndFraction plus j StartFraction d Over d y EndFraction plus k StartFraction d Over d z EndFraction right parenthesis invented by Sir W. R. Hamilton, whose use and properties were first fully discussed by Professor Tait, who is therefore called the “Chief Musician upon Nabla.”

[288] v.r. They melt.

[289] v.r. Grow.

[290] v.r. dish.

[291] v.r. like to.

[292] v.r. By Jove, I’ll have to.

[293] v.r. What fish, what whale is this, that through.

[294] v.r. vacuous.

[295] v.r. I.

[296] v.r. about.

[297] v.r. bows down.

[298] v.r. That.

[299] v.r. May be.

[300] v.r. tower.

[301] v.r. endless.

[302] The “Red Lions” are a club formed by Members of the British Association, to meet for relaxation after the graver labours of the day.

[303] “Leonum arida nutrix.”—Horace.

[304] Statique Expérimentale et Théorique des Liquides soumis aux seules Forces Moléculaires. Par J. Plateau, Professeur à l'Université de Gaud.

[305] Accentum nolim mutare.—C.

[306] Var. 1. 'Iερνικὸς suppedidat nescio quis. Mihi quidem haud displicet.—[Ed.]

[307] Compare Mr. Swinburne’s Bothwell, Act II. Sc. 17.

[308] v.r. opening.

[309] v.r. secret.

[310] v.r. away.

[311] Illi robur et aes triplex! (Horace.)

[312] Berlin Monats-berichte.

[313] v.r. pensile.

[314] i.e. Helmholtz—the chief magician!

[315] See Prof. Sylvester’s Address to the Johns Hopkins University.

[316] v.r. whirl.

[317] v.r. rears.

[318] Heaviside and Lodge, see p. 374.

[319] v.r. is made.

[320] v.r. sage of Leipzig.

[321] v.r. secret.

[322] v.r. ’s an amphicheiral.

[323] v.r. Whole.

[324] v.r. swift expanding.

[325] v.r.

And where that chain is lost to sight
Let viewless fancies guide my darkling flight,
Through atom-haunted worlds in series infinite.

END OF PART III.